Election
Election for the governorship of the U.S. state of New Mexico
The 1998 New Mexico gubernatorial election held on November 3, 1998 to elect the governor and lieutenant governor of New Mexico. Republican incumbent Gary Johnson was re-elected to a second term in office over Albuquerque mayor Martin Chávez.
As of 2026, this is the last time a non-Hispanic was elected governor of New Mexico.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “1998 New Mexico gubernatorial election”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The 1998 New Mexico gubernatorial election held on November 3, 1998 to elect the governor and lieutenant governor of New Mexico. Republican incumbent Gary Johnson was re-elected to a second term in office over Albuquerque mayor Martin Chávez.
As of 2026, this is the last time a non-Hispanic was elected governor of New Mexico.
Johnson campaigned on the policies of his first term in office, promising to continue improvements to public education; cutting state spending, taxes, and bureaucracy; and frequent use of his veto and line-item veto power. Chávez, a strong Hispanic candidate in a state with a 40 percent Hispanic population, was initially considered the favorite in the race.
Johnson won with 55 percent of the vote. This made him the first governor of New Mexico elected to two consecutive four-year terms, following the expansion of term limits in 1991. Johnson made the school voucher system a "hallmark issue" of his second term.
Text from the Wikipedia article “1998 New Mexico gubernatorial election”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.